Insecurity, Gender Imbalance, Illiteracy Hampering Immunization, Experts Say
By Alice Etuka, Abuja
Focal Persons from the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) and Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN) Zero Dose Learning Hub Project have attributed the high number of unimmunised children in Nigeria to insecurity, Illiteracy and gender imbalance.
They disclosed this at Zero Dose Learning Hub (ZDLH) Peer Learning and Exchange Retreat on immunisation accountability and advocacy held in Abuja from the 18th to 22nd of June.
AHBN’s Coordinator, Dr. Aminu Garba informed that the Zero Dose Learning Hub was an intervention being implemented by AFENET and the AHBN across 4 states of Sokoto, Borno, Bauchi and Kano.
These, he explained were states with high concentration of zero dose children, that is, children who have not received the first dose of penta vaccine or the first dose of DPT.
“Our aim is to ensure that we engage in advocacy and stakeholder engagement to ensure that every child in Nigeria is fully vaccinated.
“Right now in Nigeria we have about 2million children that are zero dose. In the issue of vaccinating children, we need to empower care givers, women and health workers who are female. If you have a lot of children who are zero dose in a community, the mothers need to be empowered and given permission; a standing order that our children should be immunized”, he said.
The Coordinator further stated that a healthy gender balance was germane in the effort to boost immunization uptake. “Gender perspective is very key, we want to ensure that women are empowered economically to be able to take a decision for the children and to transport the children from the community to the PHCs to be fully immunised.
“We are encouraging more community dialogue. We need to create men’s club at the community level, we need to empower them to be able to address critical challenges of not taking the children for immunization. We need to empower the men to allow their wives, mothers, sisters to take children for immunisation”, he said.
According to him, the retreat brought together people from Sokoto, Bauchi, Borno and Kano. “We expect that they have been empowered with a lot of information they can take back to the state level and implement. We are looking to see commissioners of women affairs, commissioners of health, commissioners of finance, religious and traditional leaders all becoming immunisation champions”, he concluded.
On his part, Bauchi State Lead / AHBN Consultant, Dr. Hassan Musa said 13 out of the 20 Local Government Areas account for the high number of zero dose children in the state.
Musa highlighted some of the barriers limiting care givers from bringing their children for immunization to include, the hard to reach nature of underserved communities, low level of awareness, low level of education of the caregivers and the autonomy to take children to immunisation centers.
Speaking on the impact of the retreat, the Project Lead said, “for the 3-4 days retreat, we were able to have multiple presentations, share experiences and knowledge across states. The findings are that we really need to be intentional and purposeful to extract key issues that are cross cutting across the 4 states and also neatly integrate issues that are state specific.
“For us in Bauchi, we have domesticated the Social Protection Policy and we are trying to leverage on that document to see how we bring in other stakeholders outside the Ministry of health like Ministry of education, ministry of women affairs and social welfare.
“Especially the gender desk of the Ministry of Health and that of the primary healthcare development agency, we want to leverage on the presence of these units to see how we can empower women, encourage and advocate for travel autonomy, shared responsibility within family to make sure that we disabuse and encourage equal decision making within family such that women can freely take their children to get immunised”, he said.
He added, “we have mapped out critical stakeholders across the state, based on their level of influence and level of interest. This includes both high-level government officials, other stakeholders, partners, program officers and the traditional Institutions”.
Similarly, Borno State Focal Person for the AHBN Zero Dose Learning Hub project, Dr. Adamu Umar said Illiteracy, poverty and insecurity were factors identified to be fueling the rate of unimmunised children in the state
“In Borno state, we have 8 LGAs, out of the 27 that are classified as zero dose and most of these zero dose Local Government Areas are located in the insecurity prone areas, when there is no peace, people are not stable to take their children for vaccination.
“These are some of the factors that are responsible for the high number of zero dose children we have in Borno state. With the improvement of the security situation, we are making progress”, he said.
He further added that he was going to use the findings presented during the retreat to amplify advocacy efforts, to reach out to policy makers, the traditional institutions and the communities to address the aforementioned factors.
